Whose Democracy?: Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe

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Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997 - 233 pages
The years since the collapse of communism in 1989 have witnessed a dangerous renewal of religious intolerance and nationalist demands across Eastern Europe. In this provocative application of moral philosophy to the analysis of contemporary political processes in the region, Sabrina Ramet draws upon the literature of Natural Law to demonstrate that liberal democracy depends on a delicate balance between individual and societal rights. Exploring the situation of Hungarians in Slovakia, Albanians in Kosovo, theoretically-inclined Catholic bishops in Poland, Serbs in Croatia, and contending forces in post-Dayton Bosnia, Ramet contends that the terms of dispute in these cases can be deceptive. She illustrates that claims made on the basis of what she calls the doctrine of collective rights actually subvert the liberal democratic project.

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Contents

Back to the Future in Eastern Europe
17
Eastern Europes Painful Transition
39
The New Ethnarchy and Theories of Rights
59
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

Sabrina P. Ramet is professor of international studies at the University of Washington.

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